Prescription costs dropping, PHO manager says

The cost of prescriptions issued by general practitioners has been decreasing in Otago, a letter sent by the Otago Southern Region Primary Health Organisation says.

It follows the recent letter sent by the Otago and Southland District Health Boards chairmen appealing to GPs to exercise prescribing restraint.

Southern Region PHO manager Kaylene Holland has sent a letter to the nine GPs within her organisation, saying she did not wish to dispute the information in the health boards' letter but to ensure all information was presented accurately and in context.

She noted the boards' letter referred to community pharmacy expenditure, something which encompassed the cost of all medicines dispensed by community pharmacies.

This cost would include prescriptions from GPs, hospital specialists, dentists, mental health specialists, midwives, and those in family planning centres, but the letter urging restraint was only sent to GPs.

Figures from the PHOs' performance programme reports from District Health Boards New Zealand showed the costs of GP prescribing in Otago had dropped for the past two financial years, with the drop in expenditure from 2007-08 to 2008-09 totalling more than $328,000.

This went against the national trend, which showed expenditure increasing.

In the case of her PHO there had been an increase in 2007-08, but a $195,824 decrease last financial year, she said.

Ms Holland said while she could not give figures for other Otago PHOs, it was her understanding they also showed decreases.

The health boards' letter was endorsed by PHO transition board chairman Conway Powell and South Link Health executive director Prof Murray Tilyard.

Prof Tilyard is also chairman of the transition board's clinical health services subcommittee.

The letter should not have gone out without discussion around the context of the information given, Ms Holland said.

Otago chairman Errol Millar, who came up with the idea of the letter to GPs, said he could not comment on Ms Holland's letter as he had not yet received it.

When news of the boards' letter broke last week, New Zealand Pharmacy Guild chief executive Annabel Young called for it to be retracted, because she said it contravened an agreement with the District Health Boards New Zealand that boards would not seek to limit prescribing volumes.

Her view was not accepted by Mr Rousseau or Mr Millar.